Solid ink or phase change ink printers conventionally receive ink in a solid form, either as pellets or as ink sticks. The solid ink pellets or ink sticks are typically inserted through an insertion opening of an ink loader for the printer, and the ink sticks are pushed or slid along the feed channel by a feed mechanism and/or gravity toward a heater plate in the heater assembly. The heater plate melts the solid ink impinging on the plate into a liquid that is delivered to a print head for jetting onto a recording medium.
Ink sticks may be provided with sensor features for conveying ink stick data, or ink stick identifiers, to the print control system. The nature of solid ink technology renders the addition of conventional labels or tagging mechanisms, such as barcode or RFID tags, for conveying ink stick data to the printer control system impractical. Accordingly, ink stick sensor features are formed into and from the ink stick body itself that are configured to interact with sensors in the ink loader to convey ink stick data, or ink stick identifiers, to the print control system. Sensor features are configured to interact with sensors in the ink loader of the imaging device to generate signals indicative of ink stick identifiers pertaining to the ink sticks.
An imaging device controller having access to the identifiers generated by the sensor features may compare the generated ink stick identifiers to one or more designated ink stick identifiers that may be, for example, stored in the memory of the controller. The designated ink stick identifiers stored in the memory to which the generated ink stick identifiers are compared correspond to ink stick types that are intended for use with the particular imaging device. In this manner, ink loaders may be configured to differentiate ink sticks based on ink stick identifiers so that ink sticks may be sold, marketed, distributed, etc. in accordance with different marketing programs, price points, geographic distribution areas, etc. The imaging device controller may then enable or disable operations of the ink loader or imaging device, optimize operations or influence or set operation parameters based on the ink stick identifiers generated by and received from the ink sticks themselves. For example, if an ink stick identifier indicates that an ink stick is not compatible with or not intended to be used with the imaging device, the control system may generate an alert signal or message to an operator and/or service personnel and disable printing operations.
Designated ink stick identifiers corresponding to one or more ink stick series that are intended to be used with the particular ink loader have typically been programmed, for example, into the memory of imaging device controller during manufacture of the device. Due to the wide range of possible ink stick configurations, i.e., series of ink sticks, and corresponding ink stick identifiers, designating ink loaders for use with a particular series of ink sticks and individually programming the ink loaders with the appropriate identifiers prior to sale or distribution may be prohibitively time consuming and costly.